Sunday, September 07, 2003
The Magdalene Sisters
Just returned from watching The Magdalene Sisters. A most claustrophobic movie, it recounts the tale of the Irish Catholic equivalent of Birkenau, the Magdalene Convents, where upto 30,000 women were kept in brutal "captivity" and made to do slave labour to repent for their sins. The sadism (a combination of physical and emotional) of the nuns runinng the convent has to be seen to be believed. The surreal part of the story is the revelation made at the end of movie that the last of these places shut down in 1996 -- at a time when Ireland was being proclaimed as the Celtic Tiger and was very much part of the EU. And you thought this sort of societal anti-woman behaviour existed only under the Taliban.
Geraldine McEwan delivers a fantastic performance as the Mother Superior, and I would not be surprised if she is nominated for something at the Oscars, assuming the academy can look beyond the criticism of the Vatican, which also tried creating a furore at the Venice Film Festival, where the movie won the Golden Lion. I can only hope similar movies made 30 years from now will make the religious bigots of today, irrespective of religion, feel at least a little bit embarassed. Hopefully, thats what anyone from the Irish Catholic Chruch would feel after watching this movie.
Geraldine McEwan delivers a fantastic performance as the Mother Superior, and I would not be surprised if she is nominated for something at the Oscars, assuming the academy can look beyond the criticism of the Vatican, which also tried creating a furore at the Venice Film Festival, where the movie won the Golden Lion. I can only hope similar movies made 30 years from now will make the religious bigots of today, irrespective of religion, feel at least a little bit embarassed. Hopefully, thats what anyone from the Irish Catholic Chruch would feel after watching this movie.
